Most of the Sinhalese numerals (see my lasttwo posts) are cognate
to English numerals, though sound changes have obscured their
relationship. Hence hatərə 'four' is cognate to four as
well as Sanskrit catvaaras 'four'. Turner's A
Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages lists
another Sinhalese form satara with s-. I
suspect that there was a shift

but 'eight': Skt aṣṭa > Si aṭə (with the
cluster ṣṭ simplifying to ṭ; cf. how pt in
'seven' simplified to t; was there an intermediate stage hṭ?)

If c became h, would its voiced counterpart j
have become voiced ɦ? I was surprised to learn that c
and j developed in different directions: the former softened to
a fricative but the latter hardened to a stop:

'person': Skt jana > Si danaa
(cognate to gene)

'tongue': Skt jihvaa > Si diva

'life': Skt jivita > Si divi
(cognate to quick, vital, bio, zoo)

If original c and j became s/h and d,
where did modern Sinhalese c and j come from? Clusters
and/or loanwords?

The first looks like Sanskrit eka. Was it inherited more or
less intact from Sanskrit eka (whose e is long [ee]
unlike Sinhalese short e) or borrowed into Sinhalese?

The second and third are quite different from their probable
Sanskrit sources.

Turner's A
Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages lists OSi.
(Old Sinhalese?) de and do 'two'. I presume these are
from Sanskrit dve (f./n. nom.) and dvau (m. nom.).
Sinhalese has no grammatical gender, so perhaps do was lost,
and de was changed to deka to match eka
'one'. (Cf. how *n- became d- in 'nine' to match the d-
of 'ten' in Slavic: e.g., Russian devjat' and desjat',
etc.)

Lenition is more common than fortition, and loss of nasality is more
common than gaining nasality.

*3.9.00:15: The masculine is illegible in the
online edition: n*lm (sic). I assume *l is an OCR error
for a vowel letter.

**3.9.2:48: A major exception is Cantonese which
retains *m: e.g., maan 'ten thousand'.

I used to wonder if 旺角 Mong Kok in Hong Kong was an
anomalous case of *w > m in Cantonese. The phonetic
of 旺 is 王 wong. However, it turns out that the original
name of Mong Kok was 芒角 Mong Kok which was changed to 旺角
Wong Kok in the 30s, though its English name Mong
Kok did not change.

3.9.22:48: Chinese borrowings in Vietnamese seem to be from an early
Cantonese-like dialect. 'Ten thousand' was borrowed twice: the older
borrowing muôn retains the *m- absent from the
newer borrowing vạn. Did earlier Cantonese have a *mw-
or *mv- that was borrowed into Vietnamese as *w- or *v-
but was simplified to m- in Cantonese?

Maybe it's longer by the time you read this. And maybe it's telling
that there's no Sanskrit article on Russia.

Does anyone read the
Sanskrit विकिपीडिया Vikipiiḍiyaa for information? What's the
longest
article there? I
wouldn't be surprised if there are even shorter 'articles'.

At least there is a Sanskrit Wikipedia article on Russian. There is
no such article on the Sinhala
Wikipedia which has 6,550 articles - fewer than the Sanskrit
Wikipedia with ७,३७३ लेखाः '7,363 articles'. Which of the two
Wikipedias has more readers?

I visited the Sanskrit Wikipedia to see what its adjective for
'Russian' is. भाषा bhaaṣaa 'language' is feminine, so
रूसी
ruusii must be the feminine nominative singular, and I assume
that रूसस् ruusas and रूसम् ruusam are
the corresponding masculine and neuter (cf. the Latin noun endings -us
and -um).

is Hindi for 'Cyrillic', judging from the
title of this Wikipedia article. Why is the first vowel ii
instead of i? I assume that the word was borrowed from English,
and a careful English pronunciation of Cyrillic is [sɪrɪlɪk],
not *[siirɪlɪk].

The article has a table of Cyrillic-Devanagari correspondences with
the following oddities:

1. Cyrillic а <a> and и <i> are transliterated with both
short and long
Devanagari vowel symbols. What determines whether a short or long
symbol is
used? The
Hindi Wikipedia article on Russian only lists long symbols
for those vowels and a short इ <i> for ы (though язык is
Devanagarized as यज़ीक् <yaziik>!)

Cyrillic е <je> and ю <ju> are only
transliterated with short Devanagari vowel symbols.

But vowel length has nothing to do with the differences between all
of the above Cyrillic vowel letters!

2. Cyrillic д and т are transliterated with both dental and
retroflex
Devanagari symbols, even though д and т are dental in Russian. Do the
retroflexes reflect the influence of English? (English d and t
are alveolar and are Devanagarized as retroflexes.)

3. Cyrillic е <je> is transliterated as ऍ <ɛ> [ɛ], but
Cyrillic э <e> is transliterated as ये <ye> [jee]
with
<y> as well as ए <e> [ee]. The Devanagarizations give the
false impression that е and э have different vowels.